Showing titles in Biology

I hate every wave of the ocean', the seasick Charles Darwin wrote to his family during his five-year voyage on the H.M.S. Beagle. It was this world-wide journey, however, that launched the scientists career.

In the late 1600s, a distinguished English polymath, Robert Hooke, and an eccentric Dutch cloth-merchant, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, look down their hand-made microscopes. What they see introduces a radical concept that sweeps through biology and medicine, touching virtually every aspect of the two sciences and altering both forever. It is the fact that complex living organisms are assemblages of tiny self-contained, self-regulating units. Our organs, our physiology, our selves—hearts, blood, brains—are built from these compartments. Hooke christens them "cells".

Alice Roberts uses the latest research to uncover the evolutionary history hidden in all of us, from the secrets found only in our embryos and genes - including why as embryos we have what look like gills - to those visible in your anatomy. This is a tale of discovery, exploring why and how we have developed as we have. This is your story, told as never before.

Humans are a puzzling species. On the one hand, we struggle to survive on our own in the wild, often failing to overcome even basic challenges, like obtaining food, building shelters, or avoiding predators. On the other hand, human groups have produced ingenious technologies, sophisticated languages, and complex institutions that have permitted us to successfully expand into a vast range of diverse environments. What has enabled us to dominate the globe, more than any other species, while remaining virtually helpless as lone individuals?

David Attenborough first appeared in front of a television camera in the 1950s when, together with London Zoo's Curator of Reptiles, Jack Lester, he persuaded the BBC to mount and film an animal-collecting expedition. The result was Zoo Quest. Specially recorded for audio, David Attenborough's early adventures are sometimes life-threatening, often hilarious and always totally absorbing. The warmth and enthusiasm that have made him a broadcasting legend are instantly apparent here as he recounts this magical journey.

Challenging what you know and think about your own body and how it defends you against all sorts of maladies and how it might also eventually be your own downfall, Immune is a vital and remarkably fun crash course in what is arguably, and increasingly, the most important system in the body.

The existence of free will - our ability to choose between one course of action and another, to determine our own destiny - is a foundation stone of Western society, dictating our notions of fairness and justice, punishment and reward, our very identity as individuals and humans. But as world-renowned scientist Robert Sapolsky shows, there is not a shred of evidence to suggest that free will exists, even while everything in our biology leads us to believe that it does.

An Immense World will take us on an insider's tour of the natural world by describing the biology, physics and chemistry animals use to perceive it. We may lack some of their senses, but our own super-sense lies in our ability to understand theirs. And in the face of the largest extinction event since the meteor that killed the dinosaurs, our only hope of saving other species is bound up with our ability to see what they see, and feel what they feel.

Living at the limits of our ordinary perception, mosses are a common but largely unnoticed element of the natural world. Gathering Moss is a beautifully written mix of science and personal reflection that invites listeners to explore and learn from the elegantly simple lives of mosses.

Cat Bohannon answers questions scientists should have been addressing for decades. With boundless curiosity and sharp wit, she covers the past 200 million years to explain the specific science behind the development of the female sex. Eve is not only a sweeping revision of human history, it's an urgent and necessary corrective for a world that has focused primarily on the male body for far too long. Bohannon's findings will completely change what you think you know about evolution.

Over the past 20 years, Evolutionary Biologist Herman Pontzer has conducted ground-breaking studies across a range of settings, including pioneering fieldwork with Hadza hunter-gatherers in northern Tanzania. This book draws on his eye-opening research to show how, contrary to received wisdom, exercise does not increase our metabolism. Instead, we burn calories within a very narrow range: nearly 3,000 calories per day, no matter our activity level.

The key to living a happier, healthier life is inside us. Our gut is almost as important to us as our brain or our heart, yet we know very little about how it works. In Gut, Giulia Enders shows that rather than the utilitarian and - let's be honest - somewhat embarrassing body part we imagine it to be, it is one of the most complex, important, and even miraculous parts of our anatomy.

Naming Darwin's Black Box to the National Review's list of the 100 most important nonfiction works of the 20th century, George Gilder wrote that it "overthrows Darwin at the end of the 20th century in the same way that quantum theory overthrew Newton at the beginning". Discussing the book in the New Yorker in May 2005, H. Allen Orr said of Behe, "He is the most prominent of the small circle of scientists working on intelligent design, and his arguments are by far the best known."

The population is terrified by reports of so-called COVID-19, measles, swine flu, SARS, BSE, AIDS, or polio. However, the authors of "Virus Mania", investigative journalist Torsten Engelbrecht, Dr. Claus Köhnlein, MD, Dr. Samantha Bailey, MD, and Dr. Stefano Scoglio, BSc PhD, show that this fearmongering is unfounded and that virus mayhem ignores basic scientific facts: The existence, the pathogenicity and the deadly effects of these agents have never been proven.

The 1964 murder of a nationally known cancer researcher sets the stage for this gripping exposé of medical professionals enmeshed in covert government operations over the course of three decades. Following a trail of police records, FBI files, cancer statistics, and medical journals, this revealing book presents evidence of a web of medical secret-keeping that began with the handling of evidence in the JFK assassination and continued apace....

We human beings share 98 percent of our genes with chimpanzees. Yet humans are the dominant species on the planet - having founded civilizations and religions, developed intricate and diverse forms of communication, learned science, built cities, and created breathtaking works of art - while chimps remain animals concerned primarily with the basic necessities of survival. What is it about that two percent difference in DNA that has created such a divergence between evolutionary cousins?

In the best-selling, prize-winning A Short History of Nearly Everything Bill Bryson achieved the seemingly impossible by making the science of our world both understandable and entertaining to millions of people around the globe. Now he turns his attention inwards to explore the human body, how it functions and its remarkable ability to heal itself. Full of extraordinary facts and astonishing stories, The Body: A Guide for Occupants is a brilliant, often very funny attempt to understand the miracle of our physical and neurological makeup.

Perhaps the most influential science book ever written, On the Origin of Species has continued to fascinate for more than a century after its initial publication. Its controversial theory that populations evolve and adapt through a process known as natural selection led to heated scientific, philosophical, and religious debate, revolutionizing every discipline in its wake. With its clear, concise, and surprisingly enjoyable prose, On the Origin of Species is both captivating and edifying.

The microbiome is the missing link in modern medicine: a vast genetic universe of bacteria, yeasts, viruses and parasites that live inside us, influencing every aspect of our health, even the way we think and feel. In this mindblowing book, scientist and surgeon James Kinross explains how the organisms that live within us have helped us evolve, shaped our biology and defined the success of our species. With dazzling science and fascinating stories, this pioneering book will change the way you think about human health forever.

From the battlefields of Homer's Iliad, where muscles first entered world literature, to the Victorian-era gymnasiums where women built strength and muscle by lifting heavy weights, to a retirement home in Boston, where a young doctor discovered that training at high intensity can produce the same relative gains for frail ninety-year-olds as for thirty-year-olds, Stronger places the science and significance of our muscles in an astonishing new light.